End the Persecution of Chen Guangcheng

Floor Speech

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, last week one of China's most heroic defenders of human rights, Chen Guangcheng, was transported from prison to his family's house. This was good news, but only a step in the right direction. We must not gloss over the fact that Chen, who in 2006 revealed to the world the massive violence and brutality of the one child per couple policy enforcement campaign in Linyi, Shandong province, remains under house arrest, imprisoned in his own home, which is surrounded by surveillance cameras and police. Foreign reporters attempting to enter his village have been beaten and driven away, and Chen is reportedly in need of urgent medical attention, having been regularly beaten in prison, where he lost a great deal of weight.

Just today a Radio Free Asia reporter spoke with Chen and his wife over a cell phone. Chen's wife said, and I quote, ``He has a sort of haunted look. And for the first few days after his release he couldn't speak at all.'' Think about it. This is a very, very tough and articulate man, yet for the first few days after his release he couldn't speak at all. Such was the brutality of Chen's imprisonment.

So it is all the more inspiring to read Chen's words. The Chinese Government may have broken his body in the laogai, but they have absolutely not broken his spirit. Chen got on the phone and called on ``international organizations and people of conscience'' to react to his continued arrest in a united manner. That's the house arrest. And, ``If they can help me today,'' he said, ``their actions will help another person tomorrow.''

A few words about Chen, Mr. Speaker. He is a self-taught lawyer, having been denied the benefits of higher education due to his blindness, and was known in Linyi for advising his neighbors on how to resist the government's injustices. In 2005 and 2006 he took the brave step that changed his life. He began interviewing people and gathering evidence about the massive violence and brutality of the one child per couple policy and its enforcement campaign that shook Linyi in 2005. What he uncovered was shocking: 130,000 forced abortions and sterilizations in Linyi County in that year alone, in addition to mass detentions and beatings.

In order to stop Chen's investigation, officials placed him under house arrest. But he managed to slip away and travel to Beijing, where he met with journalists from Time magazine and conferred with legal scholars about filing a large class action suit against officials responsible for the campaign. Officials soon abducted him back to Shandong, returned him to house arrest, and then convicted him on trumped up charges of property destruction. Chen served the full term of his 4-year, 3-month sentence, despite health problems indicating the appropriateness of medical parole.

Mr. Speaker, the Chinese Government's relentless pursuit of Chen corresponds to the continued violence of the one child per couple policy, which Chen bravely exposed. Sadly, what he documented in 2005 and 2006 is still going on today all over China. This year alone we have reliable reports of large-scale forced abortion and sterilization campaigns in Guangdong, Fujian, Yunnan, Zhejiang, and Jiangxi provinces. The campaign in Guangdong province was widely reported, the story having been broken by The Times of London in April of this year.

In Guangdong's Puning County, officials rounded up women and men, as well as the relatives of any resisters, detained them in cramped conditions, and working 20-hour shifts for 20 days, forcibly sterilized their quota of almost 10,000 people.

Mr. Speaker, Chen Guangcheng documented the fact that Chinese women are immensely traumatized by these campaigns and by the entire one child per couple policy. It's been estimated by the World Health Organization that some 500 women per day commit suicide--not per week, not per month, but per day commit suicide--in China, largely attributable to this horrific and barbaric policy called one child per couple. It is invasive. There is a crude surveillance of women's reproductive cycles, including monitoring their cycle per month. The strict birth limits drive sex selection abortion and the tragedy of what we call gendercide--the missing girls in China, which may be as many as 100 million girls since 1979, when this barbaric policy was first pushed on China by the West and by the United Nations.

It's been estimated that upwards of 40 million men will not be able to find wives by 2020 because they had been forcibly aborted as part of the China policy.

Finally, I appeal to our government, I appeal to our President, please speak out on behalf of Chen Guangcheng for his release so that this terrible nightmare he has had to endure will end.

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